You’ll only find [one article](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/11/03/wkryg03.xml) on it in the British broadsheets, but Kyrgyzstan has spent the past five days in the middle of massive, peaceful anti-government demonstrations. The protesters are principally calling for a change in the constitution to reduce the power of the president, but they also want to get rid of the President, [Kurmanbek Bakiyev](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurmanbek_Bakiyev) and Prime Minister [Felix Kulov](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Kulov).
I love watching the role of blogs in all this. [Edil Baisalov](http://baisalov.livejournal.com) the protesters’ unofficial spokesman, is posting frequent (Russian) updates on Livejournal – from a yurt outside the parliament building. Meanwhile Yulia at [New Eurasia](http://kyrgyzstan.neweurasia.net/) is keeping up a commentary from the opposite side, very critical of the opposition and worried that repeated coups will turn the country into a banana republic. Even Kyrgyz news agency AKIpress has turned to livejournal: they were having trouble keeping their site up, so they set up a livejournal and started posting reports up there.
If you want to follow what’s going on in English: here are news updates, analysis from people outside the country here and here. Currently [Eurasianet](http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav110706.shtml#) is reporting that things have started to turn violent – here’s hoping for a compromise of some kind.
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http://www.registan.net/ Nathan Hamm
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http://ohuiginn.net dan
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http://www.registan.net/ Nathan Hamm